


Etch Your Tale Into the Forest

by Adrian_Nox



Category: 10th Kingdom
Genre: Gen, consider the whole miniseries to be fair game, i'll finish this whenever i get around to it, sorry about the inevitable delay, this entire thing should be pretty tame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 02:59:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3341093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adrian_Nox/pseuds/Adrian_Nox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten drabbles for the 10th Kingdom, focus placed squarely on Wolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Etch Your Tale Into the Forest

For the first six years of his life, he never says a word.

(Never talks with his brothers and sisters as they rolled on the ground, playing, laughing at the sky. Never protests when stronger wolves knocked him to the ground, jaws clamped around his neck til he submits.)

Every warm night his mother gently strokes his tail beside the crackling fire, murmuring stories and waiting for words he never speaks.

The night the townspeople shout with rage and sharpen their pitchforks is the night his father returns, hands slick with blood, and takes him to the edge of the farm.

 _Can you see?_  his father asks.

The world crowds around, over and under, into his eyes. There's a soft imprint from a rabbit as it bounded across the field; a winding path where a snake uncoiled; broken twigs from a startled cat; blood coating the ground where a coop of chickens were slaughtered.

 _Can you see?_ his father repeats, narrowed gaze searching his face for something Wolf does not understand.

(Everything is there, engraved on the ground, heightened and colored by scent and taste, but written in sight.)

 _I see everything,_ Wolf whispers in the darkened night as yells and torches weave closer in the distance,  _and it hurts._


End file.
